What is Race? When some people use the
"race" they attach a biological meaning, still others
use "race" as a socially constructed concept. It
is clear that even though race does not have a biological
meaning, it does have a social meaning which has been legally
constructed.

Biological
Construction

By . . ."biological race," I mean the view of race
espoused by Judge Tucker, and still popular today, that there
exist natural, physical divisions among humans that are
hereditary, reflected in morphology, and roughly but correctly
captured by terms like Black, White, and Asian (or Negroid,
Caucasoid, and Mongoloid). Under this view, one's ancestors and
epidermis ineluctably determine membership in a genetically
defined racial group. The connection between human physiognomy
and racial status is concrete; in Judge Tucker's words, every
individual's race has been "stampt" by nature. . . .[D]espite
the prevalent belief in biological races, overwhelming evidence
proves that race is not biological. Biological races like Negroid
and Caucasoid simply do not exist. [A]. . . newly popular
[argument] among several scholars, [is] that races are
wholly illusory, whether as a biological or social concept. Under
this thinking, if there is no natural link between faces and
races, then no connection exists.

There are no genetic characteristics possessed by all Blacks
but not by non- Blacks; similarly, there is no gene or cluster of
genes common to all Whites but not to non-Whites. One's race is
not determined by a single gene or gene cluster, as is, for
example, sickle cell anemia. Nor are races marked by important
differences in gene frequencies, the rates of appearance of
certain gene types. The data compiled by various scientists
demonstrates, contrary to popular opinion, that intra-group
differences exceed inter-group differences. That is, greater
genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled
Black and White than between these populations. This finding
refutes the supposition that racial divisions reflect fundamental
genetic differences.

Notice this does not mean that individuals are genetically
indistinguishable from each other, or even that small population
groups cannot be genetically differentiated. Small populations,
for example the Xhosa or the Basques, share similar gene
frequencies. However, differentiation is a function of
separation, usually geographic, and occurs in gradations rather
than across fractures.. .. . . The notion that
humankind can be divided along White, Black, and Yellow lines
reveals the social rather than the scientific origin of race. The
idea that there exist three races, and that these races are
"Caucasoid," "Negroid," and
"Mongoloid," is rooted in the European imagination of
the Middle Ages, which encompassed only Europe, Africa, and the
Near East.. . Nevertheless, the history of science has long been
the history of failed efforts to justify these social beliefs.
Along the way, various minds tried to fashion practical human
typologies along the following physical axes: skin color, hair
texture, facial angle, jaw size, cranial capacity, brain mass,
frontal lobe mass, brain surface fissures and convolutions, and
even body lice. As one scholar notes, "[t]he nineteenth
century was a period of exhaustive and--as it turned out--futile
search for criteria to define and describe race
differences.". . . Attempts to define racial categories by
physical attributes ultimately failed. By 1871, some leading
intellectuals had recognized that even using the word
"race" "was virtually a confession of ignorance or
evil intent." The genetic studies of the last few decades
have only added more nails to the coffin of biological race.
Evidence shows that those features usually coded to race, for
example, stature, skin color, hair texture, and facial structure,
do not correlate strongly with genetic variation. . . The
rejection of race in science is now almost complete. In the end,
we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct conclusion
with respect to the plausibility of biological races:
"Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical
attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers
of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that
Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and
that the earth stands still while the sun moves."

. . . Unfortunately, few in this society seem prepared
to fully relinquish their subscription to notions of biological
race.. . .[including the] Congress and the Supreme Court.
Congress' anachronistic understanding of race is exemplified by a
1988 statute that explains that "the term 'racial group'
means a set of individuals whose identity as such is distinctive
in terms of physical characteristics or biological descent."
(1) The Supreme Court, although purporting to sever race
from biology, also seems incapable of doing so. In Saint Francis
College v. Al-Khazraji, (2) the Court determined that an Arab
could recover damages for racial discrimination under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1981. . . Despite [a] seeming rejection of biological race,
Justice White [stated]: "The Court of Appeals was thus
quite right in holding that § 1981, 'at a minimum,' reaches
discrimination against an individual 'because he or she is
genetically part of an ethnically and physiognomically
distinctive subgrouping of homo sapiens."' (8). . . By
adopting the lower court's language of genetics and distinctive
subgroupings, Justice White demonstrates the Court's continued
reliance on blood as a metonym for race. . . .In
Metrobroadcasting v. FCC, (6) Justice Scalia again reveals
the Court's understanding of race as a matter of blood. During
oral argument, Scalia attacked the argument that granting
minorities broadcasting licenses would enhance diversity by
blasting "the policy as a matter of 'blood,' at one point
charging that the policy reduced to a question of 'blood . .
. blood, not background and environment."' (5)

Social
Construction

. . . I define a "race" as a vast group of
people loosely bound together by historically contingent,
socially significant elements of their morphology and/or
ancestry. I argue that race must be understood as a sui generis
social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as
the connections between physical features, races, and personal
characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our
faces to our souls. Race is neither an essence nor an illusion,
but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process
subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and
the micro effects of daily decisions. . . [R]eferents of terms
like Black, White, Asian, and Latino are social groups, not
genetically distinct branches of humankind. (3)